Thursday, March 30, 2017

Thu Mar 30th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. Today in Melbourne, a class of year seven kids were on a carriage between Southern Cross Railway and Westgarth. They were boisterous, happy and supervised. When they left, the only evidence they had been there was a 500 gram carton of milk coffee and a half empty bottle of water rolling on the floor. Either of which might have belonged to one of them, but also may not have. And, two year seven boys who were almost trapped by the closing doors. The train has a driver and the driver should have paid attention. The kids were clearly in uniform. They didn't panic, but looked nonplussed. One had a mobile phone, and called their parents and got off the next stop. Several stops later the train waited at a platform for several minutes. One hopes the driver was being reminded of their duty. It would be worthwhile mentioning duty to Dan Andrews too. Mathew Guy is doing a great job of gathering together a team that can effect real positive change in Victoria. Radio stations and news are being even handed, saying Dan Andrews is 'not that bad' and Guy is 'no better.' But that is like saying a train driver who never makes mistakes is like one which drives in their sleep. I am very good and don't deserve the abuse given me. I created a video raising awareness of anti police feeling among western communities. I chose the senseless killing of Nicola Cotton, a Louisiana policewoman who joined post Katrina, to highlight the issue. I did this in order to get an income after having been illegally blacklisted from work in NSW for being a whistleblower. I have not done anything wrong. Local council appointees refused to endorse my work, so I did it for free. Youtube's Adsence refused to allow me to profit from their marketing it. Meanwhile, I am hostage to abysmal political leadership and hopeless journalists. My shopfront has opened on Facebook.Here is a video I made Charge of the Light Brigade "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. He was the poet laureate of the United Kingdom at the time of the writing of the poem and the work reflects his compromised ability to express anti-war, populist sentiments while still reflecting his patriotism and remaining in the Crown's favour.

=== from 2016 ===

The Stiffler saga is not quite over yet. The floor still has glass on the wooden floorboards. Eggs still coat the walls. BBQ meat has been removed from inside and left in Stiffler's BBQ. Along with very large knives that he has kept there. The gas has been drained so he doesn't blow up the house. The doors have not been fixed. Stiffler's keys were found so there is no need to change the locks. Only we don't know yet how to pay for the clean up. Is it insurance or VCAT? Stiffler has left at least $10k in damage, probably more. He left a note claiming he was Tony Montana and guilty of $100k damage. He came by while everyone was asleep (5am) this morning and broke in by smashing a rear glass sliding door I had locked to prevent his entry earlier in the evening. Then he cheerfully called out to the other share house mates. I woke to the broken glass that sounded on the wooden floorboards like someone pouring petrol on the ground. I called emergency immediately from my locked bedroom which was only secured by a broken door. They came in ten minutes and Stiffler remained calm. Probably because his drug dealing moll was with him, about the same age as his 23 yo daughter, blonde haired, blue eyed, pretty in an ice addict whore kind of way. Police refused to arrest him for his break and enter, but escorted him to get his clothes and 'medication' and leave. He has a lot left behind, but I believe he has retrieved his stash. The place is cold and now open to insects and animals. I contacted police to ask if I could get them to issue me an intervention order, as the magistrates court is jammed up until next Monday. Police can get me an order. But not until Monday. For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.

=== from 2015 ===

A 4 yo girl left home at 3am in search of a slushie from a Kwik-E-Mart. She got put on a bus and made it to international news. We live in good times, sometimes. A bigoted policy platform is criticised by former ALP senior politicians, but not by other senior ALP politicians. The critics are threatened with expulsion. It is as if the yes men are the only ones who may speak. Warnie says he is thirsty several times as Australia defeat a valiant NZ Cricket team. Martin Crowe, we still love you. But don't drink with Warnie .. it isn't good for him. News papers promote an article where an escort says she loves her job. Which is ok. Except the women exploited, killed or tortured in the industry suggest it needs to be heavily regulated. Another article features a woman saying her husband did not want children so she had an open marriage. Maybe there were alternative choices? A Thai resort is heavily criticised for an elephant being in a party photo. Woe betide when the critics discover "the Party" with Peter Sellers. On this day in 1815, Joachim Murat issued a proclamation that would later unify Italy. But in the short term got him executed. Joachim was a Marshall of France during the revolution and a friend of Napoleon, who was his brother in law. Joachim had been made King of Naples by Napoleon between 1808 and his capture by the Austrians in 1815. As a king he was a dandy. At his execution, he was bare faced, and ordered the riflemen to shoot for the heart but miss the face. Joachim's missive began "Italians! The hour has come to engage in your highest destiny." The process of Italian unity finished in 1871, but began in 1815. In 1842, Ether was used for the first time in an operation. Before then, teeth were pulled, limbs were amputated and surgery was conducted on conscious people. In 1855, border ruffians from Missouri invaded Kansas to change the legislature to accept slaves. In 1867, Alaska was purchased by the US from Russia for $7.2 million. In 1939 Batman was first introduced, part of Detective Comics #27. In 1981, an attempt was made on President Reagan's life by John Hinkley Jr. Press secretary Brady later died from wounds.

From 2014

It isn't something I'm paid for, or get credit for, but I start, or promote, memes. Sometimes years pass, and I get to see them come back to me. I started one with a court recorder recording ridiculous statements by barristers. Or when a dying Clare Oliver publicly begged that her fight against sun beds be remembered. Or a sculpture of David illustrating the dangers of fast food. Or a childhood backyard baseball match influencing an Astronauts' words. I didn't invent chess vs death, but I made it a Christmas funny. I enjoy it when I see people posting them, or an incarnation of them. So I get how they feel when some eco facist gleefully points to some factoid about Coal, Solar, Nuclear, Fracking, GM food, socialism etc etc. But I post obvious jokes or things that benefit people. eco fascists post terrible, murderous memes that hurt people. Sometimes, a mate somewhere is well remunerated for the meme, but it upsets me that people fall for it. In politics they call it spin. Recognise that it isn't balanced if someone spins only one way. This last week marked a hundred days without boat people arriving in Australia or drowning en route. Business is improving. An old institution of knighthoods has been re-established. Jobs are being created. The ALP complained about ninety of their members being ejected from parliament by the speaker, without being able to point to any one instance of where a member should not have been ejected. It was a week that Andrew Bolt described as bad for the Federal Government. And yet in over six years, the ALP never had a week that good. I get Mr Bolt wants to be balanced. But I feel he needs to pick his battles better. The worst thing that could be said about knighthoods is that they are meaningless. But the reality is they profoundly support institutions that keep society together, pointing the way up for school children who often have to endure years of confusing leftist memes from teachers.

This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.

===

I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January.

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc

Miranda Devine – Tuesday,March 29,2016 (11:18pm)

Tim Blair – Wednesday,March 30,2016 (4:28pm)

“It is a matter of ordinary experience that a person who is treated badly may, eventually, react badly,” decides human rights acitivist Julian Burnside, now offering an expanded version of his terror causation theory:

If people in the West regularly condemn all Muslims, it is inevitable that some Muslims will begin to feel as though they are seen as the enemy, as though they are hated in the West. So, for example, British mosques have been attacked by anti-Muslim groups.

Were the people who attacked the mosques reacting badly to being treated badly? Maybe someone called them racists or chavs.

In Australia, the construction of mosques has been violently opposed …

For a QC, Burnside’s language is remarkably careless.

… by some community groups, who were vocal in their condemnation of Muslims. Donald Trump has, in substance, said that Muslims should be excluded from the USA.

Any group confronted with hostility like this is likely to be offended. As a matter of ordinary human nature, it is easy to understand that some members of that group will react badly.

That explains all of those Scientology terrorists, then. And the Catholic riots following the royal commission into child abuse. And those Hare Krishna fatwas of the 1980s. And when Burnside’s legal colleagues went on killing sprees to avenge lawyer jokes.

I do not approve of terrorists, whether Muslim, Red Brigade, Irish separatist or anything else. But I worry about the consequencws of treating one group as if all members of that group presnet a threat to our Society.

I worry about a senior legal figure who can’t spell “consequences” or “present” and who thinks “society” is a proper noun.

What we need to learn is that we are threatened by extremists.

Really? This guy’s a genius.

Of course there are Muslim extremists, just as there are extremists who adhere to other ideologies. We would be making a catastrophic mistake if we treat all Muslims as if they are extremists.

Nobody is making that mistake, Burnside.

Until an expert in the field can show me that I am wrong, I will continue to hold the opinion that being the target of relentless bigotry will drive some people to extremism, and is therefore one cause of terrorism.

There are thousands of Islamic terrorists in the Middle East, including many from Australia. Julian must know of at least one who is credibly able to describe how Western bigotry made him want to behead Syrians.

We are being very foolish if we continue to tolerate public abuse of Muslims generally.

Again, we might need some evidence here. Get to work, lawyer man. You could probably start with interviews in Raqqa.

UPDATE. Mr Burnside QC AO replies in comments:

What a pity that Tim Blair did not put forward an actual argument to counter mine. Is this the new editorial standard at the Tele? But he did spot a couple of typos.

That is arguably his greatest contribution to the discussion.Thanks for spotting the typos, Tim. I’ve corrected them.

His scorn has radicalised me, and now I have no choice but to murder children in a Lahore park. The blood of my victims will be on your hands, hatemonger.

Labeling Cegielski “Trump’s top campaign strategist” is incorrect. Cegielski worked for a super PAC (which, despite the name, is not legally recognized as a political action committee and by law cannot contribute directly to or coordinate with a political campaign, although they can use raised funds to campaign independently) and not for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign …

Hope Hicks, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, told Yahoo News that Cegielski was never employed by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Mr Turnbull said it would be “very important” that the design did not disadvantage smaller states, such as Tasmania and South Australia, and those problems could be addressed through other “mechanisms within the federal finance arrangements”.

In other words, their status as welfare states would be formalised with the federal government providing a safety net for states that cannot live within their own resources.

Malcolm Turnbull has announced plans to provide states and territories with independent income taxing powers, in what he termed “the most fundamental reform to the federation in generations”. The Prime Minister declared he believed allowing the states to raise their own income tax rate was “the only way” to address the vertical fiscal imbalance that remains the “failure at the heart of the federation”.“We would withdraw from a certain amount of income tax that would be available to the states and we would agree that that would be the maximum they would levy for a period,” Mr Turnbull told reporters in Sydney’s Penrith. “In the longer term, a state should be free to lower that amount or indeed raise it and then they are accountable to their own voters...”

What the hell is Turnbull doing?

First, “addressing the vertical fiscal imbalance” means nothing to voters and will not win the Liberals a single vote.
Second, the plan will almost certainly not happen, adding to the growing pile of Turnbull’s dead plans.
Third, this distracts from what is meant to be the big excuse for the early election and the key issue - the blocking by the Senate of bills to control union power.
Fourth, Turnbull clearly hasn’t run his plans past his Treasurer in any detail, with Scott Morrison denying taxes would rise but Turnbull saying the states could hike them.
Fifth, this lets Labor attack the Liberals as planning to raise taxes, which indeed seems the plan.
Sixth, any suggestion of raising taxes will see Turnbull attacked by conservative Liberal MPs, further destabilising him.
Seventh, explaining the plan at a presser today - called, strangely, at a football oval as if this was just some passing fancy - exposed Turnbull at his waffly worst.
Eighth, even Turnbull could not explain how any of this would leave voters better off. He could only explain how federal politicians would be better off, saying voters would then hold the states top blame for any problems with the health funding this state-based tax would provide.

Is Turnbull determined to throw away the next election? Is this really the work of his brains trust?

PAUL BARRY [Media Watch host]: The other recurrent criticism, no news to you, and again often in the Newscorp papers but also from the coalition, is that the ABC is biased, that we are, or you are or we are left wing, elite, obsessed with issues that the rest of the public aren’t really terribly interested in, and that it’s a case of group think. What do you say to that? MARK SCOTT: ....We do a different style of journalism to the journalism that I think increasingly you see in News Limited papers and increasingly you see with different columnists as well. You know, a lot of that criticism comes from right wing commentators and they wonder where are the strong right wing commentators on the ABC. We don’t do that kind of journalism. We don’t ask questions about our journalists’ voting pattern and where their ideology are. We look at the journalism that they put to air and we have strong editorial standards that demand fairness, balance and impartiality, and we hold them to that test.PAUL BARRY: But is there a valid criticism that no presenter in this organisation is right of centre? I don’t know whether that’s true, but that is a criticism that’s often made.MARK SCOTT: Yeah, and I think it’s ill-formed and people wouldn’t know… The test isn’t your background, the test isn’t your ideology, the test is the way you broadcast and the journalism you put to air. Now, there’s a second question though on I suppose the group think, and are we broad enough in the issues that we cover? I think we need to continue to challenge ourselves on that, that are we too narrow in the subjects we put to air? Jim Spigelman, our chairman, framed it in an interesting way a little while back. He said are we more concerned about gay marriage than we are about electricity prices? That was a really good question. And we continue ...PAUL BARRY: I think the answer is probably yes, isn’t it?MARK SCOTT: Well, and I think we continue to work with our staff to ensure that we are informed about the issues the Australian public is informed about, we’re broad in the voices that we’re putting to air and the debates that we’re airing, and I think that’s an ongoing challenge…

Incredible. I shall respond in full in tomorrow’s column.
Then there was this, for those still dreaming that the ABC might be shamed into reform:

PAUL BARRY: Are you relieved Tony Abbott is no longer Prime Minister? MARK SCOTT: Well, that was a decision made by the Liberal Party, by the coalition.... But there were times when his frustration at some of our stories became very evident in his public statements…PAUL BARRY: Is life going to be easier with Mr. Turnbull as Prime Minister? Do you think he’s more of a friend of the ABC than the previous Prime Minister was?MARK SCOTT: Look, I think he’s been very engaged around the ABC… I think we can expect from him a sophisticated engagement around the debate around the future of public broadcasting.

Students at a leading NSW university are being told to refer to Australia as having been “invaded” instead of settled in a rewriting of official Australian history. They are also told it is offensive to suggest James Cook “discovered” Australia and inappropriate to say indigenous people have lived here for 40,000 years.Instead, they should say “since the beginning of the Dreamings”.A report in The Daily Telegraph today says a so-called “Diversity Toolkit” on indigenous terminology for University of NSW ­undergraduates says that Aus­tralian history should be broken up into categories, including “pre-­invasion” and “post-invasion”. It also claims the word settlement ignores the reality of indigenous lands “being stolen”.“Australia was not settled peacefully, it was invaded, occupied and colonised,” say the guidelines, prescribed reading for some undergraduate students… Students are also being taught the terms “Aborigines” and “Aboriginal people” are inappropriate, and they should use the term “indigenous Australian people”.

The university is plainly wrong. It is trying to disenfranchise non-Aboriginal Australians of their birth right and drive a division between the “races”. Anyone born here is indigenous to this land, not least because in most cases they have no other place to call home.
This is not just my opinion. It is becoming that of even Noel Pearson, the prominent Aboriginal activist:

As I once said: I was born in Australia six years before Pearson. If you consider us as individuals I am more indigenous than Pearson. I “came” here before he did.
What the University of NSW is preaching, though, is racism. We are to be defined by the race of some of our ancestors, and on that basis given different status and rights to belong.

Italian coast guard and navy vessels rescued nearly 1400 migrants from boats and rubber dinghies in the southern Mediterranean on Tuesday, officials said, indicating numbers were rising again as the weather warms up… Officials fear the numbers of migrants trying to reach southern Italy by sea, relatively contained so far this year, will increase as sailing conditions improve in warmer weather and as the migrant route to Europe via Greece dries up after a deal brokered by the United Nations will result in economic migrants being sent back to Turkey. New boat arrivals in Mithymna on Lesbos, Greece, have reduced to almost zero over the last few days, but it remains unclear whether that is due to the windy weather or the deal between the EU and Turkey.

About 35,000 people, mostly men, drive their own long-haul trucks. They have borrowed about $15 billion from Australian banks and other financiers to fund their vehicles. Most of the loans are also secured on the family home. A government body — the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal — has made decisions that are set not only to destroy the livelihood of most of them but force them to sell the family home…The big winners are the large transport companies and the Transport Workers Union. A grateful TWU will pay a proportion of its windfall gains to the ALP, which will gain funding capacity not matched by any other political party. The whole exercise is being timed for a period when parliament is in chaos, so legislative remedies look impossible.Let me explain how this has happened…[T]he Gillard government set up the Road Transport Remuneration Tribunal..., which is now headed by a former ACTU official.... The tribunal decided the best way to stop owner drivers from driving too long and taking drugs was to make them charge more for their services. But no such charging instructions were given companies using TWU employees, so they can undercut owner drivers.

Rodger Shanahan (associate professor at the Australian National University’s National Security College, and research fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy) replying over several tweets:

Comment from someone not very well travelled nor versed in areas in which he prognosticates. Am sure that the people killed (in) Nairobi mall, Paris, Brussels, New York, Ankara, Istanbul, Bali, Tunis etc were questioning their bigoted past before they were killed. Travel in some hard parts of the world, economy class by foot may expand your rather closed mind. I know your “thing” is to be controversial and eloquent, but some real life experience may temper your strange world view. Possibly. Education is supposed to allow discernment. Tempered by real life experience it is powerful. Alone it is like an empty vessel. Methinks you are an empty vessel railing against things about which you have theoretical learning but nil practical experience.

Malcolm Turnbull ... has suggested states would be allowed to levy their own income tax surcharge beyond that to cover health and education costs… State officials were provided with details of the plan for the first time yesterday, with this Friday’s meeting of the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra expected to sign off on a deal to ­resolve the impasse over hospital funding. The Prime Minister is proposing the states would assume ­greater responsibility for supporting their hospitals beyond 2020 through a personal income tax system similar to Canada’s, allowing different levels of income tax across the states and territories.

Is this bloke just making things up as he goes along?
Interesting that Treasurer Scott Morrison isn’t this time leading the charge. He’s learned that going ahead too often means going alone and being left cut off.
UPDATEJanet Albrechtsen:

An effective economic team is far from apparent in Canberra today. The meeting between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer at the weekend to discuss health policy is a welcome sign — but no one has forgotten Turnbull’s decision to exclude Morrison from his inner circle. Or Turnbull dressing down the Treasurer over a dinner and not denying it to the media.Those ructions have caused curious Liberals to pose two questions. Is it possible Morrison is less competent than people assumed he was? Or is the Treasurer, a potential challenger for the leadership in due course, being set up to fail by a Prime Minister who plans to replace him after the election?

Tim Blair – Monday,March 30,2015 (1:06pm)

Back in the early ‘90s, my wife and I went on a driving trip around Tuscany. We were climbing high into the mountains above Lucca when I noticed in the mirror an ancient Fiat 500 slowly gaining on us; it was travelling perhaps 2km/h faster than we were.

Hard as it was to believe, the car was attempting to overtake us uphill on a long, blind bend; there were no barriers on the side of the road, which clung to a sheer cliff that fell hundreds of metres into the valley.

As the Fiat inched its way alongside, completely on the wrong side of the white line, I turned to glare in horror — tinged with a hint of admiration — at the lunatic driver.

The nun at the wheel gave me a beatific smile as I stamped on the brake to let her in, then resumed her conversation with the three other nuns crammed into the car.

Steve is no slowpoke himself, but there’s no keeping up with Italian nuns. They’ll be smiling today following Ferrari’sfirst win in 34 races. Sound the church bells!

Tim Blair – Monday,March 30,2015 (12:30pm)

Tim Blair – Monday,March 30,2015 (11:40am)

Just as New Zealand were seeming likely to post a difficult score in yesterday’s World Cup final, I received a text from SwamyArmy president Gurnam Singh: “Don’t worry. We will win.” Gurnam – that’s him below, in the custom-made Ozturban – has a gift for timing. New Zealand immediately fell from 3/150 to be all out for 183, and the Cup was ours.

The Financial Review’s Laura Tingle, one of the most frantic Abbott-haters in the Canberra gallery, has been increasing ludicrous in her attempts to find signs of Abbott’s imminent doom.
Early this month, for instance, she seriously claimed that Abbott’s improving poll figures proved he was gone already:

One view prevalent in Parliament House last week was that voters may have already been taking a leadership change into account – resulting in better party figures.

Coalition MPs argued the decline in the importance of the Abbott factor in NSW, compared with Queensland, was a mark of how successful the Prime Minister had been in changing the way he ran things. The obvious problem with that argument is that the Prime Minister has continued to regularly let off hand grenades during the NSW campaign, even if they did not explode quite as spectacularly as Prince Philip’s knighthood. Labor figures, such as former NSW Labor treasurer Michael Egan, argued the Abbott factor had actually played out entirely differently to the way many people expected. That is, that the very different style of Mike Baird only showed up the better against that of the Prime Minister.

But that’s not the theory Tingle was running with for weeks. From March 14:

Tingle doesn’t list any of ‘hand grenades’ she attributes to the PM. He did eat an onion in Tasmania during the campaign period. Might that be one? He wished everyone a happy St Patrick’s Day, too. Unthinkable.

At its first election in 1891, Labor campaigned on keeping Chinese labour out of the economy and “stamping Chinese-made furniture”. In 2015, at the poll two days ago, the party campaigned on keeping Chinese investment out of the NSW electricity network – a disgustingly racist, dog-whistling pitch to Hansonite voters.The only senior Labor figure to speak out against this atrocity was Martin Ferguson. Former premiers such as Bob Carr and Nathan Rees were silent. Labor’s federal leader Bill Shorten didn’t say a word.The party’s elder statesman, the recently retired senator John Faulkner, was not only silent, he acted as a backroom adviser to his protege, Luke Foley.

The other guilty party is Jamie Clements, the deeply cynical, logrolling NSW campaign director who masterminded Labor’s anti-Chinese advertising blitz… But this strategy has had grievous consequences: destroying the party’s moral base, its reputation for decency and tolerance....Last Wednesday, Foley jumped the shark politically, urging ASIO to investigate potential Chinese investors on the spurious grounds that, “you can transport data along the high voltage (power) line"… This is the rampant NSW Labor disease: a say anything, do anything, whatever it takes ethos that allows leaders to junk longstanding principles such as racial tolerance in search of a handful of votes in marginal seats…His stance on coal seam gas was no less illogical… The damage Foley and Clements have caused to Labor’s reputation will take many years to repair, especially in Sydney’s Chinese community… And for what purpose? A primary vote of 34 percent, with Labor – according to the new electoral pendulum – still needing a swing of 8.4 percent to win majority government in 2019.

Senior Labor figures, including former premier Bob Carr, have declare­d the fight against power privatisation lost, urging the party to get out of the way of Mike Baird’s economic reforms after his resounding NSW election victory… Mr Carr and fellow party figures Michael Egan and Michael Costa yesterday urged Mr Foley to drop his opposition to privatisation and allow it through the upper house…

Yesterday, Mr Carr, who supports privatisation but stayed silen­t during the campaign, called on the party to change its mind…Mr Egan, the former Labor treasurer, wrote yesterday that the party “should now stop fooling itself­ that an anti-privatisation policy is a vote-winner for Labor’’… Echoing Mr Ferguson, he said that Labor’s arguments against privatisation were completely bogus. “The so-called national-security­ argument against privatisation was no more than xenophobic dog-whistling. It was an argument I would expect from One Nation or the Greens, but never from Labor,” Mr Egan said.

Bob Carr ... was watching the state election results come in on Saturday evening from the sidelines of the Boao Forum in China’s Hainan province… Carr has been carving out a fourth career as director of the Australia-China Relations Institute. Yet last week he was backing the architect of Luke Foley’s “reds under the bed” campaign, ALP secretary Jamie Clements. Confused?

Bob Carr is full of praise for the strategist for his role in getting the ALP to regroup. “And what we want, is for him to be in the position for a long stretch,” he says.Clements has ... made three key decisions that will inform the election result: he saw opportunity in the state’s north by exploiting anxiety about coal seam gas; he crossed factional lines to back the Left’s Luke Foley into the Opposition Leader’s job less than three months ago; and he decided on a campaign to oppose electricity privatisation long before Premier Campbell Newman’s fall… “For the first time since the 2007 federal election, there’s a sense of hope in the NSW Labor Party,” [Senator Sam] Dastyari says.

Former federal Labor stalwart Martin Ferguson ...has been referred by the Victorian branch of the Maritime Union of Australia to the ALP’s disputes committee with the request he be expelled from the party of which he has been a member for 40 years… His referral to the disputes committee is backed by Victorian Trades Hall Council, the secretary of which, Luke Hilakari, said Mr Ferguson was “Judas who sold us out for 30 pieces of silver"…Mr Ferguson appeared in a Coalition commercial saying he was “ashamed” of his party’s opposition to the policy and its claims it would drive up power prices…Labor Senator, powerbroker and former NSW ALP general-secretary Sam Dastyari described Mr Ferguson’s behaviour as “deplorable” and “a bastard act”.“There is no place in the Labor Party for Martin Ferguson,” he said.

Rees said Mr Baird had won a mandate to privatise power but this did not vindicate the actions of Mr Ferguson and former NSW Labor Treasurer Michael Costa. “For those voters making up their minds in the last week of the campaign, rogue Laborites such as Martin Ferguson and Michael Costa wheeled themselves out,” he said… Mr Rees also condemned Labor’s scare campaign about the Chinese buying the power assets. “The Ferguson and Costa bastardry was matched for audacity by the disgraceful and cringeworthy Yellow Peril campaign run by NSW unions.”

The good news is that Mike Baird has been re-elected Premier of NSW. The bad news is that there was a large swing to Labor, un­deserving though it was. And the worse news is that if merely leasing NSW poles and wires can trigger the mother of all scare campaigns, one can only ­imagine the Armageddon any ­attempt at comprehensive tax reform would ignite.That is not to suggest tax reform has ever been easy.But it is even harder today than in the past. Despite offering potential losers massive compensation, John Howard barely scraped home in the GST election; now, however, the giveaways needed to appease every conceivable interest group are simply unaffordable.

DEAR Queenslanders, the people of New South Wales, and indeed of all of Australia, owe you, our Queensland cousins, an enormous debt of gratitude on this pleasing Monday morning… I refer of course to your extraordinarily generous ... decision to elect, some weeks ago, a completely unskilled, amateurish, novice, unprepared, clueless Labor government instead of sticking with the conservative one you had which, despite some personality flaws, was actually making a good fist of improving Queensland’s economic future....this was Queensland’s cunning and extremely effective method of warning the rest of Australia how easy it is for an economically sound government to be swept away by a party with no ideas, no policies, and nothing but a bunch of union-funded anti-privatisation claptrap to sell itself with. All it took was a Labor Party offering nothing whatsoever except the Luddite promise of retaining state assets and enough people were seduced into voting for them because ... they didn’t much like the cut of Campbell Newman’s jib.Meanwhile, inspired by Annastacia’s antics, NSW Labor decided to pull the exact same stunt. “No Sell Off” posters appeared the length and breadth of the state, coupled with sinister black and white photographs designed to convince the electorate that Mike Baird and Tony Abbott were the modern equivalent of the notorious Kray twins, much as Labor in Queensland had done linking Newman to Abbott. So self-deluded was NSW’s alternative premier Luke Foley that he actually articulated this strategy: “If Mr Baird goes on Saturday, Mr Abbott goes on the Monday”, he told a rapturous group of the faithful. I expect Mr Foley to acknowledge the flip side of his inarguable logic; namely, that he accepts that the overwhelming win for Mike Baird is an equally strong endorsement of Tony Abbott, and condemnation of the empty policies of Bill Shorten.

Breaking and entering and stealing in 1987 in Innisfail Breaking and entering with intent, attempted breaking and entering and stealing in 1990 in AthertonBreach of probation in 1992 in AthertonPublic nuisance in 1996 in Normanton and breach of bail conditions in 1999Driver’s licence suspended for unlicensed driving in 2004 and 2008Served with an Apprehended Violence Order in 2008 after a complaint by his mother

Then there are the latest allegations:

[Premier] Annastacia Palaszczuk ...said then she had ordered Mr Gordon to “get your house in order”, but believed after a discussion with him that there were no other issues. But a letter sent to Ms Palaszczuk and several other MPs from Mr Gordon’s ex-partner asking for help with recouping her child support also contained allegations of domestic violence. On Friday evening, after a website linked to former LNP MP Gavin King published the allegations, Ms Palaszczuk referred the matter to police.

Labor’s hold on minority government in Queensland is looking increasingly fragile after first time Labor MP, Billy Gordon, was sacked for a string of previously undeclared criminal offences. The Member for Cook, Mr Gordon, will now have to sit as an independent on the cross benches if he decides to stay on as an MP.

UPDATE
Labor figures seem to have adopted Billy Gordon almost as a mascot, without inquiring too deeply about his background:

Labor leader Bill Shorten 16/2/2015:

I’m here today visiting Cairns with Jan McLucas, our Shadow Spokesperson, and of course, two new Labor MPs – Billy Gordon and Rob Pyne – who are part of a new wave of making sure that Cairns and Far North Queensland get the attention that they’ve been not receiving from the LNP Government in Brisbane.

Labor Transport Minister Anthony Albanese, 19/8/2013:

I’m very honoured to launch his [Billy Gordon’s] campaign tonight. Billy is someone I’ve got to know since he has been preselected as the Labor candidate for the electorate of Leichhardt. He’s someone who of course comes from Cape York. He knows the communities, he knows the issues. Billy I think would be an outstanding representative and we’re very keen to win majority government. That means winning seats like Leichhardt back into the Labor Party. And I’d be very keen for Billy Gordon to be part of the Kevin Rudd Labor team after the next election.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, 14/7/2013:

I’m here today with our candidate Billy Gordon to announce that’s exactly what we are doing, investing $4.6 million here into Cairns … A word or two about Billy Gordon, our candidate. This fellow has been born and bred in Far North Queensland. On top of that, he’s been an army reservist; on top of that he’s been a bloke with a passion for this local community and how we can turn Far North Queensland to an even better place for the locals to live and for a stronger local economy, as well.

Jenny Macklin, media release, 8/8/2013:

The Minister for Disability Reform Jenny Macklin and Labor Candidate for Leichardt Billy Gordon visited ARC Disability Services to update them on the next steps to make DisabilityCare a reality in Cairns … Mr Gordon said only Federal Labor could be trusted to build DisabilityCare for local residents. “In contrast, Tony Abbott will make cuts to the bone which will hurt families ...”

Jason Clare, media release, 12/8/2013:

Minister for Justice Jason Clare was joined in Cairns today by Labor Candidate for Leichhardt Billy Gordon to announce ten crime prevention projects. “Local communities are in the best position to recognise local problems and develop local solutions. That is why I am delighted that the Rudd Labor Government is investing this money to target crime hotspots in Leichhardt to make our local community safer,” Mr Gordon said.

THE NSW election was meant to finish off Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Instead, the big Liberal victory threatens Labor leader Bill Shorten.
He’s in trouble because Labor in NSW ran a Shorten-style campaign — dishonest, negative and populist — that backfired.
Now Shorten is under pressure to explain why his own campaign would work any better.
How fast the tables have turned.
Just two months ago, most of the media — egged on by supporters of Malcolm Turnbull — insisted Abbott had to be dumped.
They claimed Abbott was so poisonously unpopular that he could kill the NSW Baird Government.
And so the Sydney Morning Herald, on February 5, claimed: “Federal MPs are under pressure from state colleagues to line up behind Malcolm Turnbull and force a change ...”
(Read full column here.)

First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated the beauty, power and tenacity of black women while spreading her own message of education for girls at Black Girls Rock!, an annual event honoring trailblazing women of color from all walks of life. “No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you are beautiful,” Obama told the crowd, which included many young black girls.

Reader Shocked:

Maybe it’s just me, but the Obamas seem divisive. The constant distinction between people with a different skin colour seems to be counterproductive. Sure Obama is the first black president, and he is the worst ever in creating problems all around the world, but there is no link. A black man could be a great president, but not because of the colour of his skin, but the strength of his/her character. My test is the opposite approach - a white woman meeting with white children and saying they are great white people who can do anything. Racist?

But why the constant harping on “race”? Should the focus not be on character and culture?

Liberal Democratic Senator David Lyonhjelm on a menace to open debate - and one that costs us $1 billion a year:

Selling government-run businesses also helps those who don’t care for the business. For instance, a majority of Australians never watch or listen to the ABC, so selling it and stopping government funding would benefit them. Then there are those who hate the ABC. They find it galling to be shareholders of a company who are barred from selling their shares. The government subsidised, ad-free ABC is responsible for hollowing out the rest of the news industry. Every day, thousands of Australians scan the headlines on the home pages of the SMH, the AFR or the Australian, then jump to the ABC site to read more about a story of interest without paying a subscription fee. The ABC is also a publisher of books, magazines, DVDs and music, has a string of retail outlets, and of course has an array of TV and radio stations. When it comes to explaining why each of these markets is struggling, the ABC is the elephant in the room.

The Victorian Liberal Party’s state conference this weekend will vote on a motion urging the federal Coalition to make a full-scale ‘’operational review’’ of the ABC and SBS to ‘’look at the feasibility of partial or full privatisation of both’’. The motion says the original arguments for public ownership and operation of the ABC and SBS are ‘’no longer valid in 2013’’, arguing both broadcasters ‘’aggressively compete’’ with private media outlets in a ‘’high-velocity public information environment’’.‘’Public ownership of like corporations is not compatible with Coalition policies,’’ the motion says. ‘’In a complex communication market where media outlets are required to set the agenda, ABC/SBS are finding it increasingly difficult to comply with their respective charters, thereby alienating constituents.’’

UPDATE
Meanwhile keep up the pressure. Today ABC Jon Faine noted in response to unspoken claims of bias that Liberals ministers and Opposition leaders were being interviewed today on the ABC, as if this were a big concession from the country’s state-owned media monolith.
Then, before interviewing Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg he started to complain that whenever he interviewed Liberals he was accused of bias, but then cut himself off before saying more.
So keep it up. Ring, write, protest. Make this an issue. The giant ABC is paid to be balanced. The Left have instead hijacked it and have turned the ABC into a nuclear weapon against conservatives and conservative governments. This is not merely unfair. It is unlawful. It is also a menace to healthy democracy.
Frankly, I doubt the ABC can ever be balanced, and so must be sold. But in the meantime we must name and shame the worst offenders. If Faine is feeling the heat, so must others. So turn it up.
PS: And Faine then went on to beat up non-existent leadership speculation against Tony Abbott.
UPDATEWith the NSW election lost and no votes left to persuade, the ABC goes to town on NSW Labor:

The Insiders are in furious agreement that Labor ran a racist campaign over electricity — now that it’s all over, naturally. ABC TV, ­yesterday:

Fran Kelly: It was the biggest scare campaign in history … Barrie Cassidy: It also had racist overtones, according to the Coalition. Dennis Atkins: And it did. Kelly: It did.

UPDATE
Reader Brian S:

The most stupid question I ever heard asked in an election campaign was asked by Juanita Phillips on ABC news on Friday night. She asked Mike Baird if his likely election win really gave him a mandate to sell the poles and wires, because his victory was probably only due to his enormous popularity rather than any real voter support of the coalition’s privatisation plan. How convoluted, desperate and downright insulting to voters this question was. Not-to-mention, bizarre!

HOW many warnings does Labor need? It cannot keep pandering to the Greens without losing its soul — and now its seats.
The NSW election saw the Greens do something unthinkable a decade ago. They won perhaps four seats in the Lower House — two in the country.
And here is the insanity of it. NSW Labor leader Luke Foley endorsed the Greens’ hysterical and deceitful campaign against coal-seam gas, campaigning furiously against this safe technology in the seats of Ballina and Lismore.
And who won those seats from the Nationals? The Greens.
What madness is this?
(Read full article here.)

I was at the game and thought Shane Warne was a complete bogan. His post-match interviews at the MCG after Australia won the World Cup were so low rent that I wondered how far cricket has fallen from the days when Richie Benaud was our premier commentator:

...no less than three times did Warnie bring up the topic of a night on the booze after the team’s glorious World Cup win.… “Are you feeling thirsty?” he asked wicketkeeper Brad Haddin.Then he moved to batsman Steve Smith.“Are you going to have a bit of a drink tonight too Smithy? Are you going to get thirsty as well? The boys are thirsty they seem.”And just when you thought it was over ...“So what’s the plan — besides lots of drink and that?” he asked Shane Watson and Josh Hazlewood.“How long is that going to last. Just one night, two nights? We saw (coach) Darren Lehmann say it might last a week. Do you reckon it will go a bit longer than that?”

There were a couple more references to big drinking from Mark Nicholas. No other country would on winning the World Cup make such a celebration of drinking and drunks. Just as well Pakistan didn’t win.
I was in a drinking section of the MCG where the beer convoys were running full time. And even there the crowd started to groan at Warne’s crassness.
Can you imagine Bradman been asked this stuff? Credit to Smith, who didn’t seem comfortable with this line of questioning and switched to praising team-mates and opponents.

Greenpeace commissioned one of the world’s leading reef biologists to find out what caused the dramatic coral decay.... PROFESSOR OVE HOEGH-GULDBERG, SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: ...it means that coral reefs are certainly a likely casualty of any global climate change.

In 1994, five years after completing his doctorate, he wrote a report for Greenpeace about coral bleaching in French Polynesia. Ka-ching! That appears to have been cheque number one. In 1996 he wrote a follow-up study… By 1999 he and Greenpeace had expanded their scope… – they’d gone global. This new study was titled Climate change, coral bleaching and the future of the world’s coral reefs… A year later Hoegh-Guldberg authored still another Greenpeace report, Coral Bleaching: Pacific in Peril… Fast forward a few years and Hoegh-Guldberg has a new patron – the World Wildlife Fund. The 2004 report he wrote at its behest was titled: Implications of climate change for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef… In 2009 Hoegh-Guldberg was the lead author of a second WWF report. This one was titled: The Coral Triangle and Climate Change: Ecosystems, People, and Societies at Risk.

David Koch is a major donor, exhibit sponsor and trustee on the Board of Directors at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History. David Koch’s oil and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Mr. Koch also funds a large network of climate-change-denying organizations, spending over $67 million since 1997 to fund groups denying climate change science. When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge. This corporate philanthropy comes at too high a cost. Drawing on both our scientific expertise and personal care for our planet and people, we believe that the only ethical way forward for our museums is to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation.

Although these people claim to be “deeply concerned” that museums compromise their integrity when they accept charitable donations from “special interests,” some of these people are themselves closely aligned with special interests. Australian marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a case in point. For years, I’ve been shouting from the rooftops that reports produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can’t be taken seriously due to the fact that it recruits scientists closely aligned with activist green groups. But the geniuses at the IPCC have taken no notice. Instead, they thought it was a good idea to put a man who has [cashed] cheques from both the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace in charge of its latest chapter on the world’s oceans. Twelve months ago, Hoegh-Guldberg was so unconcerned about special interests and the IPCC’s reputation he wrote the foreword to a WWF Australia brochure. And yet here he is, signing a letter that holds museums to a higher ethical standard than he himself has displayed. Hypocrisy, thy name is Hoegh-Guldberg.

Will Hoegh-Guldberg set an example? Cut ties to all green groups and associated crusaders for the warming faith?
By the way, has the ABC’s warmist presenter Tony Jones yet declared his own vested interests?
(Note carefully: I am not saying Hoegh-Guldberg changed his opinions for cash. the auccusation he is essentially making of others. I am pointing out an inconsistency between his complaints about vested interests and his own history of vested interests. That is all.)
(Thanks to reader Steve.)

THE Queensland state government could come crashing down after troubled rookie MP Billy Gordon was sacked. Mr Gordon has admitted a string of undeclared criminal offences, including a violence order, The Courier Mail reported. At this stage, Independent MP and Speaker Peter Wellington said he would continue to support the government, but it places the Palaszczuk administration in troubled waters.

Miranda Devine – Sunday,March 30,2014 (6:19am)

It’s more than curiosity, though the desire to solve mysteries is born of self protection.

It’s not just empathy; more people have died in less noted tragedies around the globe, from war to mudslides, since the Malaysian Airlines flight vanished en route to Beijing on March 8.

No, it is fear that drives our obsession with MH370 – the primeval fear that humanity is puny and powerless in a vast unknown universe, a fact which life in 21st century cities does so much to disguise.

Fear is where hubris and reality collide.

Don’t we have the planet surrounded by satellites? Didn’t Edward Snowden tell us that every phone call and electronic communication is monitored 24/7? Doesn’t Google Earth show everything? Haven’t we shrunk the world?

Guess not.

Suddenly we see that, despite our technological prowess, we are not all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful deities who can control and explain everything that happens on Earth – especially not the climate.

After more than three weeks, the cooperative brilliance of 25 nations, including the US and China, has not managed even to pinpoint the path of the plane, where it came down, or positively identify debris in the Indian Ocean. It has been an extraordinary demonstration of our limitations, despite the miracles of the iphone in our hands.

We may never know why MH370 veered off its course and flew for hours before most likely running out of fuel and crashing into the ocean.

So, you have to ask: if we are finding it so hard to find a missing jumbo jet, how can we possibly think we can stop climate change?

Computer models have proven no more useful for forecasting global temperatures than a flight tracker app is for finding MH370.

For the past 15-17 years, temperatures have not budged, despite rising carbon dioxide emissions. This so-called warming hiatus, or pause, makes a mockery of climate models which predicted drastic global warming due to the atmosphere’s supposed allergy to greenhouse gases.

The entire climate alarm industry was built around those unreliable models. The dire warnings issued by the United Nation’s IPCC rely on their temperature forecasts.

But, year after year, the actual temperatures defy the predictions, and climate scientists have not been able to explain why.

So maybe the atmosphere is not as sensitive to CO2 as we were led to believe. Maybe our contribution to climate change is not as significant as we imagined.

The obvious conclusion is that our quest to stop climate change is an arrogant delusion. The planet will warm or cool at will, regardless of any heroic sacrifices we make.

As the eminent American physicist Fred Singer wrote last week: “All the evidence suggests that Nature rules the climate – not Man.”

The dawning realization of our powerlessness is driving a new more realistic imperative to adapt to climate change rather than trying to stop it.

The latest IPCC report on the impacts of climate change is due out tomorrow (Monday) and leaked stories paint the sort of apocalyptic scenarios that have been scaring a generation of children witless since The Day After Tomorrow showed tsunamis drowning everyone on the east coast of America.

But there are signs that the church of climate alarm is under siege.

First came news last week that a lead author on that IPCC report’s chapter on economics has demanded his name be taken off it because he says it was rewritten to exaggerate the impact of climate change.

‘The message in the first draft was that through adaptation and clever development these were manageable risks,” British climate economist, Dr Richard Tol, told reporters.

“This has completely disappeared from the draft now, which is all about the impacts of climate change and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

When even IPCC grandees are breaking ranks you know the game is up.

Another good sign is that the IPCC report will contain a “new emphasis” on adaptation rather than preventing global warming, and is more cautious than before about the overall costs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As reality sinks in, it’s only a matter of time before the climate charlatans who have misled us for two decades are brought to account.

WA MP Dr Dennis Jensen kicked off the process of discovery last week with a bold call in Parliament for a formal audit of the climate data processes of the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.

He claims they have been picking and choosing data to suit an alarmist agenda. He has a PhD in Materials Science and Physics, and has worked for the CSIRO and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation as a research scientist, so is uniquely placed among politicians to question the information which has driven absurd and wasteful government policy on climate change.

Imagine what we might have achieved if, instead of engaging in a futile bid to change the climate, all those great minds had been focused on curing cancer or bringing potable water to the poorest corners of the planet, or stamping out child sexual abuse.

If last night’s Earth Hour and all those meetings in Copenhagen and Kyoto had been for something useful and important, what might we have achieved?

Piers Akerman – Sunday,March 30,2014 (6:38am)

OPPOSITION leader Bill Shorten’s attempt to portray himself as a man for the future has been crippled by his endorsement of Labor’s reversion to the use of discredited disruptive parliamentary tactics.
The former AWU boss who entered federal parliament just seven years ago is blindly following a bad script which dismally failed Labor under former leaders Kim Beazley, Mark Latham and Kevin Rudd.
It calls for Labor to be as unruly as possible during parliamentary sittings in the sure knowledge that most in the press gallery will have little or no institutional memory of previous use of the strategy and will be distracted by the theatrical shouting and posturing.
Even those with very poor powers of recall should recollect former Independent Rob Oakeshott’s ludicrous September, 2010, claim that to a new parliamentary era and a new way to conduct parliament after he took 17 days to make what he called a “juicy sexy decision” with fellow turncoat Tony Windsor to support Julia Gillard’s minority government.
No doubt Oakeshott was minded to hope for greater decency after watching Labor’s attempts to distract the Howard government from its mission of restoring the nation’s fortunes and rebuilding lost confidence, as well as bringing unchecked illegal immigration under control.
Like every other recent Labor Opposition leader, Shorten expresses dismay at the state of the parliament but permits his team to run amok.
In February, 2002, Simon Crean talked up the prospect of “getting order back in the place” but at least he was smiling as he did so, having previously admitted to being “part of the problem”.
He was however, he said, “prepared to turn over a new leaf” but nothing changed.
Four years later, then Health Minister and Leader of the House Tony Abbott said “ Labor’s parliamentary rancour is the result partly of 10 years in opposition and partly continued inability to accept the legitimacy of the Howard Government”.
He was moved to comment after then Opposition health spokesman Julia Gillard had been ejected from parliament for using the unparliamentary term “snivelling grub”, an expression Abbott had himself used.
“The difference between her behaviour and mine was that she defied the chair and I did not,” he said.
It was Gillard, too, who showed her contempt for proprietaries with the appointment of Peter Slipper to the Speaker’s chair in November, 2011, to secure an extra vote for her dysfunctional government.
When his lurid and explicit text messages about female genitalia were revealed a year later, Gillard, the archetypical feminist, defended her appointee from then Opposition leader Abbott’s calls for removal saying she would not be lectured by “this man” about sexism and misogyny.
Labor voted down the motion to remove the sexist Speaker 69-70 and not a single member of the handbag hit squad of Emily’s Listers crossed the floor to condemn Slipper’s behaviour and nor did any of the Mummy Bloggers who Gillard entertained at Kirribili House take to the antisocial media with their outrage.
That they saved for Abbott who was making a stand against sexist behaviour.
Taking its lead from the shrill former Labor prime minister and her contrived outrage, Shorten and his team have been in noisy defiance mode ever since the Abbott government came to office and Speaker Bronwyn Bishop took the chair.
The extraordinary manner in which many Labor MPs have flouted her authority reached a crescendo Thursday when Tony Burke, the manager of Opposition business in the House, rose to confront Bishop with an unspontaneous motion of no confidence.
While such a motion had not been moved since 1949, it was not that different the confrontation between the Labor Opposition and Speaker David Hawker in October, 2006, when Anthony Albanese complained that it was undemocratic to “apply one set of rules to Labor and another to the Government”.
In the two years since his appointment, Hawker had issued 500 warnings against Labor MPs and only 52 to Liberal MPs.
Albanese, who accounted for 46 of the warnings, said: “Anyone who watches Parliament knows that both sides robustly debate but only one side is penalised.”
Abbott responded: “any fair-minded observer would conclude that the Labor Party creates 90 per cent of the disruption.”
That was then it could have been now.
Labor is still playing the same card. It is confused and contradictory.
Burke, summing up Labor’s lost week, whined on Friday: “We didn’t ask Tony Abbott to define himself by knighthoods and damehoods (sic).”
Whether four Australians get to call themselves knights or dames is of almost no consequence to an English-speaking people with laws and parliamentary procedures firmly grounded in centuries of significant British history.
It may be a distressing for a few who will always be anguished when individuals are rewarded for singular achievement but not for the many who laud accomplishment but are really more interested in issues which will directly affect their lives.
Putting the title distraction aside, the Coalition did go to the election promising to bring the Budget back under control, stop illegal boat arrivals, repeal the mining and carbon taxes, and overhaul the anti-free speech provisions in the anti-discrimination laws.
It won a clear mandate to carry out its program – all the Labor Party is doing is thwarting the will of the people with its ridiculous time-wasting tactics.

On the show: Who are these people telling you what you can’t say and can’t hear? And some tape of Malcolm Turnbull mocking Tony Abbott.
Guests Anthony Dillon, who identifies as “part Aboriginal”, Judith Sloan and former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa.
In NewsWatch, the great Gerard Henderson.
Plus Your Say, and a tale of two party-parties.
On Network 10 at 10am and 4pm.

Yes, let’s not’s skip lightly over the fact that Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s own mother-in-law was only too happy to become the first of Tony Abbott’s new Dames, despite Labor and the media’s scoffing at the awards.Peter Hatcher seems cross:

Australians had the very firm impression that Quentin Bryce was a republican… “In our imagining, I suggest a nation,” she said in the Boyer Lectures “where, perhaps, my friends, one day, one young boy or girl may grow up to be our nation’s first head of state.” So republicans felt betrayed when Abbott announced that she had agreed to become the first Australian dame of the 21st century.Did Bryce sell out her belief for the trinket of a title? ... Some of her close friends think so; they’re disappointed in her.One long-time Bryce friend, the scholar and feminist Dale Spender, didn’t directly criticise the outgoing governor-general but she did say that “I do think it’s a bit peculiar to revive these things after ... so long."…One of her themes was the Australianisation of the vice-regal office, using subtle incrementalism, making small but significant changes.For instance, she broke a precedent stretching back to British settlement in 1788 by ending the practice of writing letters to the monarch detailing Australian political and official affairs…This makes it even more perplexing and disappointing that she would accept Abbott’s offer. Is it not enough to have served in the most distinguished way in the most distinguished office in the land? Does she really need to revive the accusation of bunyip aristocracy, the confected tryhard respectability of the bumpkin desperado?

First much of the media claimed “stop the boats” was a stupid slogan and the Abbott Government would fail. Now that the Government has done just that over the past 100 days, some of the reporting yesterday was plain spiteful.Julian Burnside wasn’t happy, either:

THE Abbott Government is misleading the public as it hails 100 days passing without an asylum seeker boat arriving on Australian shores, a high-profile human rights lawyer says. “We know that a number of boats have been intercepted and the people on board have been placed into orange life rafts and sent back,...If the message they’re getting across is that asylum seekers aren’t trying to get to Australia any more, the answer to that is yes, they’re misleading the public.’’

In fact, the Prime Minister yesterday made no such claim as Burnside implies:

I’m not going to comment on operations on the water, just say that we have implemented every aspect of the policies that we put to the people at the election and obviously one of the policies that we did take to the election wasturning boats around where it’s safe to do so. In the second hundred days we have now had no successful ventures to Australia and I would say the principal contributor to that result in particular has been our maritime operations.

Nor did the Immigration Minister:

We now go into the third phase where we move into the post monsoon period and the risks are just as great and our response will be as follows: we will maintain the intensity of all of our operations in all areas of Operation Sovereign Borders, both with our offshore processing, with what we’re doing at sea and through our disruption and partnership operations all the way up through the region, all the way back to source, we’ll maintain the intensity. Anyone who seeks to come here or run a venture in the next hundred days will find the same set of policies that stopped all those coming over the last hundred days.

UPDATE
Is the Sydney Morning Herald trying to set up Tony Abbott for a “mission accomplished” moment by verballing him?

Here is what Abbott actually said:

QUESTION: Are you prepared to say “mission accomplished”?PRIME MINISTER: No, because as Scott said, the monsoon is coming to an end and traditionally, people smuggling operations have picked up at the end of the monsoon.... So, it is too early to declare that the job is done...

George Orwell once wrote: ‘’If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’’ With the government poised to amend the nation’s racial discrimination laws, Orwell’s words seem especially relevant.Racism is born out of ignorance, but to properly educate people, we must know what they really believe.In response to the proposed amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act, shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said: ‘’What the attorney-general said today gives the green light to racist hate speech in Australia.’’If that’s true, we must rally in defence of equality and freedom whenever these ideals are challenged by a narrow-minded minority. Racial discrimination is conquered by the very freedom we stand to lose if we let governments dictate which speech is truly free. A culture cannot evolve simply by criminalising the expression of bad ideas.Threading the needle between free speech and discrimination requires a steady hand. At a time when the ‘’offended’’ appear to hold all the cards, I’m ready to step on rare common ground with the government…Having grown up through South Africa’s emancipation from apartheid, it’s clear that race issues are relative, and from this perspective, I’ve paid little attention to the recurrent racism in Australian sport. This has been a mistake on my part.Some of the most racist people I’ve encountered in Australia are smarmy suits, the type who can’t wait to deliver yet another Acknowledgement of Country, often at the opening of some monolithic shopping complex or other absurdity. This subtle, condescending tokenism of high society concerns me more than the obvious bigotry we usually read about.People are different, and pointing to these differences doesn’t make one racist, it makes one observant. Differences we’re too afraid to acknowledge can never be celebrated. And cultures we’re too afraid to criticise continue to cause much harm. Relaxing the laws that bound our speech will invariably lead to offence, which in turn will lead to debate. Open conversation, rather than legal intervention, is our best hope for a lasting solution to racial discrimination.

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General Eisenhower Warned Us.

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

"Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened".

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet.. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This is in memory of the, six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests Who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while many in the world looked the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends someone ..

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True Story of Miss India 2009 - an inspiring story for everyone..!!

---(Miss India 2009 - Pooja Chopra) ---

--- Neera Chopra is her mother. This is her story.---

...Neera Chopra lived through abuse, poverty and some tough choices to make her once-unwanted girl child, Pooja Chopra,

--- Neera Chopras story:---

"I don’t know where to begin... they were terrible times. My husband was well-placed, but the marriage had begun to sink almost as soon as it began. Like most women do, I tried to work against all the odds .My in-laws insisted everything would be alright if I had a son. My first child was a daughter, and that didn’t do me any good... but I couldn’t walk out. I had lost my father, my brother was in a not-so-senior position in Bata. I didn’t want to be a burden on my family and continued to live in my marital home in Kolkata.

I looked after my mother-inlaw, who was suffering from cancer, and while bathing her, I would tell myself she would bless me and put things right.

I don’t know how I tolerated it all. The least a man can do, if he must philander, is to not flaunt his women in his wife’s face. Then began the manhandling. I still wanted my marriage to survive. I was a pure vegetarian and learnt to cook non-vegetarian delicacies thinking it would please him.

Then, I was pregnant again. When Pooja was eight months in my womb, my husband brought a girl to the house and announced he would marry her. I thought of killing myself. I hung on the slight hope that if the baby was a boy, my marriage could be saved.

When Pooja was born a girl, for three days, nobody came to the hospital. There was a squadron leader’s wife on the opposite bed, who was kind enough to give me baby clothes for Pooja to wear. When she was 20 days old, I had to make a choice. I left the house with my girls ‘ Pooja and Shubra, who was seven then. I haven’t seen my husband since. I promised myself, even if we had just one roti, we would share it, but together.

I began life in Mumbai with the support of my mother, brother, who was by then married. It wasn’t the ideal situation, especially when he had children - space, money, everything was short. I began work at the Taj Colaba and got my own place. How did I manage? Truth be told, I would put a chatai on the floor, leave two glasses of milk and some food, and bolt the door from outside before going to work. I would leave the key with the neighbours and tell the kids to shout out to them when it was time to leave for school.

Their tiny hands would do homework on their own, feed themselves on days that I worked late. My elder daughter Shubhra would make Pooja do her corrections... This is how they grew up. At a birthday party, Pooja would not eat her piece of cake, but pack it and bring it home to share with her sister. When Shubhra started working, she would skip lunch and pack a chicken sandwich that she would slip in her sister’s lunchbox the next day.

I used to pray, ‘God, punish me for my karma, but not my innocent little kids. Please let me provide them the basics.’ I used to struggle for shoes, socks, uniforms. I was living in Bangur Nagar, Goregaon. Pooja would walk four bus stops down to the St ThomasAcademy . Then, too little to cross the road, she would ask a passerby to help her. I had to save the bus money to be able to put some milk in their bodies.

Life began to change when I got a job for Rs 6,000 at the then Goa Penta. Mr Chhabra, the owner, and his wife, were kind enough to provide a loan for me. I sent my daughters to my sister’s house in Pune, with my mother as support. I spent four years working in Goa while I saved to buy a small one-bedroom house in Pune (where the family still lives). I would work 16-18 hours a day, not even taking weekly offs to accumulate leave and visit my daughters three or four times a year.

Once I bought my house and found a job in Pune, life began to settle. I worked in Hotel Blue Diamond for a year and then finally joined Mainland China ‘ which changed my life. The consideration of the team and management brought me the stability to bring them up, despite late hours and the travelling a hotelier must do.

Shubhra got a job in Hotel Blue Diamond, being the youngest employee there while still in college, and managed to finish her Masters in commerce and her BBM. Today, she is married to a sweet Catholic boy who is in the Merchant Navy and has a sweet daughter.

I continue to finish my day job and come home and take tuitions, as I have done for all these years. I also do all my household chores myself.

Through the years, Shubhra has been my anchor and Pooja, the rock. Pooja’s tiny hands have wiped away my tears when I broke down. She has stood up for me, when I couldn’t speak for myself. Academically brilliant, she participated in all extra-curricular activities. When she needed high heels to model in, she did odd shows and bought them for herself.

When I saw Pooja give her speech on TV, I knew it came from her heart. I could see the twinkle in her eye. And I thought to myself as she won ‘My God, this is my little girl.’ God was trying to tell me something.

Today, I’ve no regrets. I believe every cloud has a silver lining. As a mother, I’ve done nothing great."

Pooja speaks on fulfilling that promise... "When I was 20 days old, my mother was asked to make a choice. It was either me, a girl child, or her husband. She chose me. As she walked out she turned around and told her husband, ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. That day has come. Her husband went on to marry a woman who gave him two sons. Today, as I stand here a Miss India, I don’t even know if my father knows that it is me, his daughter, who has set out to conquer the world, a crown on my head.

"Our lives have not been easy, least so for my mother. Financially, emotionally, she struggled to stay afloat, to keep her job and yet allow us to be the best that we could be. I was given only one condition when I started modelling ‘ my grades wouldn’t drop.

"All the girls in the pageant worked hard, but my edge was my mother’s sacrifice, her karma. Today, when people call to congratulate me, it’s not me they pay tribute to, but to her life and her struggle. She’s the true Woman of Substance. She is my light, my mentor, my driving force."

===

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the SEAL Team Six member who died last night during a training accident. A grateful nation will never forget the sacrifices he and his fellow Team members made for all of us.

- Sarah Palin

===

My sole concern regarding gay marriage, as a practicing Christian, is that the churches will be forced to act against collective conscience. None of the counter examples illustrate that. One way to nullify the issue is to remove state regulation of marriage. It isn't necessary. Christians don't feel ecstasy that Ceaser approves their conduct. As things stand, civil union seems the best compromise. So which is it? Are people campaigning for states to run churches?

I have run as a legislator twice and been hit by lobbyists over this issue. Many of the lobbyists seem to be gay, but they don't seem to care about gay rights at all, this seems to be about entangling church and state.

Civil unions are possible for almost all peoples around the world. The word 'Marriage' has religious overtones and is regulated by them. State regulation of marriage dates back to 1758 in England. Before then, it was solely a religious issue. The state issue of cohabiting and legal protections for inheritance are are separate issues to marriage. The issue of gays is, imho, a mistake by Christians defending their faith against those who don't share it. A Christian has no religious right to judge gays.

As for collective conscience, the collective faithful are allowed to protect their cultural assets. This doesn't mean people can't be wrong headed and is not well defined in a legal sense, but very well understood in social terms. - ed

David BowlesOne doesn't get a license for a civil union, one gets a marriage license. From a non-Christian perspective, marriage is a social contract, one made between two people and their community. I do not like the idea of ceding the word to religions, whatever etymology is cited, just like I would rather they didn't corner the market on "morality."

I've been encouraged by Scott M. Roberts to not simply post clever Internet memes about same-sex marriage, but to actually write my perspective. So here goes nothing. In our society, we have many religious groups that adhere to norms that run contrary to popular behavior. Certain groups avoid particular foods. Others shun blood transfusions. Some people avoid work on particular days, and still others shun dancing or particular clothes, even advanced technology. We permit them, as a society, to set those norms for themselves. We don't interfere (unless the norms hurt the defenseless or violate their Constitutional rights).

The proscription of homosexual relationships is just such a norm, a religious stance like eating kosher.

Of course, what complicates the matter is the fact that multiple religions share the same norm, so that Muslims and Christians alike, for example, tend to frown on the LGBT members of their communities. Nonetheless, the proscription is strictly religious. Just as I would speak out against the use of sharia to guide legal decisions, I am firmly against the use of Christianity's rejection of a gay lifestyle as springboard for restrictions on that lifestyle in the broader, secular society to which we all belong.

My Christian and Muslim friends, I respect you. I understand your religion appears to say that Muslims and Christians cannot be gay. I realize that those of you who interpret your scriptures literally will allow yourselves to be guided by those principles. However, I will not be silent when you mistakenly believe that our country should ape the strictures of your faith. You are free to frown on gays and not allow them to marry in your places of worship. But our society will decide as a whole whether in Constitutional terms, social terms, legal terms, same-sex marriage must or must not be permitted.

I suspect that you will soon understand how extreme Orthodox Jews, the Amish, conservative Mustlims and other groups feel, because it seems very likely that within the next five years or so, same-sex marriage will be legal at a national level. But that's okay, guys. It doesn't interfere with your ability to practice your religion and believe that homosexuality is wrong or abominable or whatever. Just relax.

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” - 2 Corinthians 5:21

===

Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."Hebrews 5:8

We are told that the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering, therefore we who are sinful, and who are far from being perfect, must not wonder if we are called to pass through suffering too. Shall the head be crowned with thorns, and shall the other members of the body be rocked upon the dainty lap of ease? Must Christ pass through seas of his own blood to win the crown, and are we to walk to heaven dryshod in silver slippers? No, our Master's experience teaches us that suffering is necessary, and the true-born child of God must not, would not, escape it if he might. But there is one very comforting thought in the fact of Christ's "being made perfect through suffering"--it is, that he can have complete sympathy with us. "He is not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." In this sympathy of Christ we find a sustaining power. One of the early martyrs said, "I can bear it all, for Jesus suffered, and he suffers in me now; he sympathizes with me, and this makes me strong." Believer, lay hold of this thought in all times of agony. Let the thought of Jesus strengthen you as you follow in his steps. Find a sweet support in his sympathy; and remember that, to suffer is an honourable thing--to suffer for Christ is glory. The apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to do this. Just so far as the Lord shall give us grace to suffer for Christ, to suffer with Christ, just so far does he honour us. The jewels of a Christian are his afflictions. The regalia of the kings whom God hath anointed are their troubles, their sorrows, and their griefs. Let us not, therefore, shun being honoured. Let us not turn aside from being exalted. Griefs exalt us, and troubles lift us up. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him."

Evening

Prayer sometimes tarrieth, like a petitioner at the gate, until the King cometh forth to fill her bosom with the blessings which she seeketh. The Lord, when he hath given great faith, has been known to try it by long delayings. He has suffered his servants' voices to echo in their ears as from a brazen sky. They have knocked at the golden gate, but it has remained immovable, as though it were rusted upon its hinges. Like Jeremiah, they have cried, "Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through." Thus have true saints continued long in patient waiting without reply, not because their prayers were not vehement, nor because they were unaccepted, but because it so pleased him who is a Sovereign, and who gives according to his own pleasure. If it pleases him to bid our patience exercise itself, shall he not do as he wills with his own! Beggars must not be choosers either as to time, place, or form. But we must be careful not to take delays in prayer for denials: God's long-dated bills will be punctually honoured; we must not suffer Satan to shake our confidence in the God of truth by pointing to our unanswered prayers. Unanswered petitions are not unheard. God keeps a file for our prayers--they are not blown away by the wind, they are treasured in the King's archives. This is a registry in the court of heaven wherein every prayer is recorded. Tried believer, thy Lord hath a tear-bottle in which the costly drops of sacred grief are put away, and a book in which thy holy groanings are numbered. By and by, thy suit shall prevail. Canst thou not be content to wait a little? Will not thy Lord's time be better than thy time? By and by he will comfortably appear, to thy soul's joy, and make thee put away the sackcloth and ashes of long waiting, and put on the scarlet and fine linen of full fruition.

2. A Benjamite, son or descendant of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish. He brought up Esther, his uncle's daughter, and adopted her as his own daughter after the death of her parents (Esther 2:5, 7).

The Man Who Was a Virtuous Patriot

What joy must have filled the heart of this foster-father of Esther, when he saw her elevated to the position of queen, and himself exalted to high office in the court. Exile and poverty were now past. Mordecai sat in the king's gate, and was aware of the plot on the king's life by two chamberlains. Mordecai reported the plot to the king, thus saving his life. According to Persian customs, a record of this act was carefully preserved in the royal archives (Esther 2:21-23; 6:1-3), and during a sleepless night of the king, was read. It resulted in Mordecai's consequent reward.

Mordecai may not appear as the most attractive of men. His message to Esther lacked courtesy and chivalry. Evidently he was insensible to the charms and graces of Esther which made her eligible as Vashti's successor. To the credit of Mordecai, however, it must be said that he refused to extend honor to one whom God had cursed (Exod. 17:14-16). Mordecai was of the tribe of Benjamin, and thus would not bow to Haman, who was an Amalekite and as such a direct descendant of the hereditary enemies of Israel.

Matthew Henry, quoting from the apocryphal chapters of Esther, says that Mordecai appeals to God in this manner:

Thou knowest, Lord that it was neither in contempt nor pride, nor for any desire for glory, that I did not bow down to proud Haman, for I could have been content with good will for the salvation of Israel to kiss the soles of his feet, but I did this that I might not prefer the glory of man above the glory of God, neither will I worship any but Thee.

We cannot but admire Mordecai standing erect while the crowd of servants lay flat on their faces. While we have no record of his faith in God, yet his action proves him to have been a godly Jew who would not bow to any but God. "So did not I because of the fear of God," has to be our motto whatever fellow servants may say or do.

===

Today's reading: Judges 7-8, Luke 5:1-16 (NIV)

Gideon Defeats the Midianites

1 Early in the morning, Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh. 2 The LORD said to Gideon, "You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, 'My own strength has saved me.' 3 Now announce to the army, 'Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.'" So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.

4 But the LORD said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there. If I say, 'This one shall go with you,' he shall go; but if I say, 'This one shall not go with you,' he shall not go...."

Jesus Calls His First Disciples

1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2 He saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch."

5 Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets."

6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink....

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..